Trump, Through an Egyptian Lens

For Mohamed Abdelfattah, an Egyptian filmmaker who moved to Arizona four months ago to live near his wife’s family, the media frenzy around the presidential candidacy of Donald J. Trump has been a central part of his introduction to life in the United States.

That Mr. Trump’s campaign has focused chiefly on the perceived threat posed by immigrants, including those from Muslim lands, has made the whole thing a good deal more personal than it might have been otherwise.

So last week, when Mr. Trump staged a rally at an airport outside Phoenix, Mr. Abdelfattah decided that this might be as good a time as any to begin a personal project he had been planning since he arrived: an episodic video blog about his first year in America.

Working in a style inspired by Louis Theroux, the British filmmaker whose documentaries revolve around his attempts to make sense of his subjects, Mr. Abdelfattah grabbed a microphone and described the spectacle outside the rally, in Arabic and in English, to a camera wielded by his wife, Jenny Montasir, an Egyptian-American video journalist.

Mr. Abdelfattah, who is originally from Alexandria but lived in Cairo throughout the upheaval of the past five years, said in an interview that his aim was to portray life in America “as if I’m talking to my friends back in Egypt.”

He added that while “my intention is not to portray just bad or stupid things,” the impact of the Trump campaign on his first months here was just impossible to ignore.